


Lost in a Nightmare

by jeannedarcprice



Series: When the Flames Settle [4]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fist Fights, Forgiveness, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Resident Evil 5 Spoilers, Survivor Guilt, illustrated fanfic, pre-Resident Evil 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:35:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24115120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarcprice/pseuds/jeannedarcprice
Summary: Jill Valentine is dead.Chris is the sole survivor of a nightmare at yet another Spencer mansion – except this time he is a broken man mourning the loss of his partner. The search for her body is still underway, but a recent briefing suggests that there is no hope of finding it. Chris has nothing left but to take responsibility for it, and Carlos Oliveira won’t let him forget it.
Relationships: Carlos Oliveira/Jill Valentine
Series: When the Flames Settle [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1742605
Comments: 9
Kudos: 51





	Lost in a Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick, indulgent one shot of both Chris’ and Carlos’ reaction to Jill Valentine’s death. She was important to both of them, and I just pictured fists flying!  
> Enjoy the FEELS!
> 
> Thanks to @akanekid on tumblr for the Spanish translation, and to my patient sister [ Ludi_ling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ludi_Ling/pseuds/Ludi_Ling) for beta reading.

\- _August 23, 10:03 a.m. – BSAA European HQ, London –_

Chris sat in the large, furnished debrief room – alone – cooling cups of coffee on the table from the meeting. It was strange to him how people could want their drinks when the news had been so grave. It was a small thing, but he noticed it. It was like their morning caffeine shots were more important than her.

Jill Valentine was dead. _Presumed_ dead. Declared dead _in absentia._

As good as dead, then. One of the ‘Original Eleven’ gone in a heartbeat.

The field team had searched that ravine a thousand times over. No luck at finding her body, no sign of even Wesker. He would’ve been content with a splat on the cold ground, bodies ripped apart by an impact that would’ve been impossible to survive. Perhaps they fell into the crashing river nearby? But how the hell would’ve their trajectory taken them there? He’d seen them both fall in a dead drop, straight down, and all that awaited them at the bottom had been a jagged cliff’s edge. Why the fuck did Spencer build his god-dammed stupid mansion on a cliff top? That was the caricatured thing to do. A rich old maniacal bastard with the means to build his nightmares and live like a ghoul on a mountaintop castle.

The briefing had been on the search for the bodies, the areas along the coast that had been scoured, trajectories and tidal data pointing to the fact that if their bodies had made it into the sea they were long gone now. Chris suddenly knew how all the families of the missing or murder victims felt, how they eventually ended up pleading for even a body to bury. Because somehow, not knowing the fate of a loved one, not having their shell to keep close in the ground was worse than the vast sea of the unknown. He remembered how he and Claire, just teenagers at the time, had stood by the gravesides of their parents as their caskets were lowered into the ground, knowing that even though they were dead there was still a place on this earth where they still existed.

He still couldn’t believe what had happened. Not just what had happened to Jill, the whole damned thing. That old decadent mansion, filled with puzzles and _monsters_. It was like reliving that long, hot summer’s night in 1998, almost eight years ago now. Only this time they hadn’t overcome the odds. This time Wesker had still been the thing that stood between them and true victory.

He could still feel her presence, her confidence, a confidence that always kept him calm. She was a strong woman, a sensible woman, a woman who was calm and collected but also with a fire that drove her. She had a strong will to survive, and he’d seen her come back from the brink of it all. What had happened to her in the Mansion Incident, then Raccoon City, had almost broken her, but she had clawed her way back. Taking down Umbrella had been a driving force in that. And here they were - Umbrella defeated, the BSAA founded to carry on protecting the world from the threat of bioterrorism. This was to be the last nail in the coffin to the Umbrella Saga for them, so to speak, finding and apprehending Dr. Albert Wesker. Detaining and speaking to old man Spencer had been a step to reaching that goal, and they’d never thought that their goal would meet them in that nightmare of a mansion.

If they’d truly known what he’d become, if they’d known he was going to be there, they would’ve taken a whole _army_ up against him. Chris had had a taste of his new powers on Rockfort Island, but had never had an inkling that it had only been a fraction of them. Still, there’d been no sight of Wesker in eight long years. Whispers, yes. Rumours, plenty. When the BSAA had finally tracked down Oswell Spencer to his coastal estate, they’d expected little resistance other than from hired goons. It was just meant to be an arrest and interrogation. They should’ve known better.

Chris studied the files beneath his fingers, agitated by the sound of the projector motor as it blindingly cast light against the wall. No one had bothered to turn it off, and he wasn’t going to either. He flipped through the file, seeing the crime scene photos – the smashed up bookcase that Jill had been flung against, her discarded handgun, a S.T.A.R.S special issue Beretta 92F that they’d dubbed ‘Samurai Edge'. It had been custom built for her by Robert Kendo back in the day. In fact, Barry, Wesker and himself had had identical models made for them too. He’d lost his on the run to the Spencer mansion all those years ago. But she’d kept hers, managed to get it out of RC before it’d been razed to the ground. A souvenir of her old life. He could hear the _click, click, click_ of her loading magazines for it, recalling the game they would play where they’d try to dismantle it and put it back together in record time. She’d beat him, of course. She had smaller, more lithe fingers that allowed it.

His brow furrowed. There was a photo of the large scuff mark on that ornate hardwood table, followed by a photo of the window they’d gone through. His blood was splattered on the floor beneath, coughed up after Wesker had winded him by thrusting him against that table, then dragged him up its length. That moment when Wesker had held him up by his neck, his body temporarily limp and helpless, and readied his hand for the _coup de grâce_ – he’d thought that was it for him, and he’d made to turn to Jill to say goodbye, even if it had just been a glance at her. Except he’d seen her for a split second, heard her cry out _No!_ before she’d become a blur and he’d been falling to the ground in a splash of glass and old rotting wood. He’d hit the ground like a rock, cold air whooshing across his face, and he’d known instantly that she was gone, that bastard Wesker along with her. He’d screamed into the void below, knowing it was cliché and hopeless, collapsing next to the ruined window and bursting into a fit of uncontrollable tears. The hope that there had even been a sliver of a chance that they had survived had spurred him on to put in a call to HQ, begging them with a shaky voice to get the fuck out there now and search for her. Wesker be damned. All he’d wanted was Jill back.

After that feverish call was over he’d gone to Spencer’s body. He was a decrepit old man, connected by wires to his wheelchair which has been severed in the fight. He supposed it hadn’t even been a fight at all, a gaping hole right through his chest, no doubt what Wesker had planned for him too before Jill... 

Chris’ vision had tunnelled, and when he came back to his senses he found himself looking at a photo of Oswell’s deceased body. At least they _knew_ he was dead. At least there was a body to account for it.

The door to the room suddenly exploded, and Chris didn’t have the energy to even look to see who it was. He was downcast, staring at the files, at a photo of her dressed smartly, a portrait taken of her when they’d founded all of this.

Heavy footsteps rounded the table, purposeful, menacing. Still he was too numb to look.

“Get up, you asshole!” the voice shouted – commanded. He didn’t. “I said _GET UP_!”

Chris recognised the voice, knew he was in for even more hurt. He slowly turned his head upward to face him, greeted by an explosion of pain in his jaw that knocked him sideways and almost out of his chair. He saw stars, his hands grasping at the desk to get purchase to stop him from falling, but all he did was knock the files onto the floor along with him.

Chris balled up, knowing what was coming, doing nothing to stop it. No sooner had he resigned himself to it he felt a kick to his stomach, his abs unclenched and not ready for it. He coughed out a breath, waiting for the next hit to connect, and it did, another bunched fist, hard boned knuckles right across his face.

His assailant got on top of him and pummelled him, Chris didn’t dare defend himself, he _deserved_ this.

“ _¡Cabrón de mierda!_ Why didn’t you do more, you _fucker_!? You left her there to die, went in there without backup? What the fuck is wrong with all of you!?” The hits came thick and fast, mostly to his head. He felt the skin split on his eyebrow, a ring catching bone, blood splattering his face. “How could _you_ let this happen?” The blows started to connect weakly until they barely hurt anymore. “How is she _dead_?”

The last punch felt like a child had hit him. Chris instinctively relaxed, not caring if they started up again in earnest. Those punches would make his body look as shit as he felt. But they didn’t. Instead they were replaced by sobbing, the sound of a man who’d lost everything.

Chris opened his eyes, looking upward, seeing the caramel-skinned man above him. He shuffled backwards to give him space, sitting up, watching him as he gave into his tears.

Carlos Oliveira. Member of the North American BSAA branch. That had been a done deal for him, an easy decision to make. He’d made it out of Raccoon City with Jill during its fall. They’d been together ever since, so it’d seemed the obvious thing to join the organisation that vowed to fight bioterrorism together.

His face was a terrible sight, lined as he tried in vain to stop his sobbing, angry as his eyes met Chris. They’d all always joked before about how he couldn’t see anything when his hair was long, but now he’d cut it shorter, the sides shorn in an undercut, the top an unruly mass of loose wavy curls.

He sniffed, loudly, wiping snot away from his nose with knuckles that were already bruising from the punches he’d laid into the man in front of him. Chris felt his grief, he’d been there, watched it all happen, saw the determination in Jill’s eyes the split second before she launched herself and Wesker out of the window to save him. He knew that could never even touch the grief that Carlos felt at losing a partner, a lover, but his own pain and grief was just as legitimate. 

He noticed what Carlos was looking at, what had probably stopped him from his attack. Amongst the upturned papers on the floor was the very same photo he’d been gazing at not long before; Jill with her growing out bob haircut, a proud but subtle smile on her face, shaking hands with some nameless bureaucrat as they’d officially founded the BSAA.

“I love her, dammit. So strong, not taking any bullshit. Even mine. What did I do to deserve her?” He paused, Chris didn’t interrupt him, staring hard at the photo just as he was. “Chris?”

He looked up, their eyes meeting – understanding between them. Forgiveness? 

“What did _we_ do to deserve her?”

What a generous thing for him to say. Chris allowed the memory of their helicopter ride after that Mansion Incident to form in his head. How Jill had rested her head on his shoulder only to fall asleep not a second later. His eyes had gazed upon her, cut and bruised, before looking over at Barry and Rebecca opposite them. In that moment she’d reminded him of Claire, and he’d decided that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to prevent her from going through anything like that again.

But it had. She’d been stuck in Raccoon when the shit had hit the fan. She’d got out with Carlos, overcome all the odds, made a connection with him. And he’d realised then that he owed Jill’s safety not only to her, but to Carlos as well, to all the people that cared about her.

And he’d failed.

“I’m sorry…” It was feeble, but it was all he could offer. It was the only truth of the matter.

“I know you are, man.” Carlos responded, his voice sounding distant. “If it’d been me in there instead of you, I would’ve let that bastard rip my heart right outta my chest. _Still beating_. ‘Cause it only beats for her.”

_How poetic of him_ , Chris thought. _Even at a time like this_. Jill would’ve loved it. She always told him on the side with an exasperated smile that she loved his cringe worthy remarks. He’d made them in Raccoon, and he sure as hell didn’t stop after they’d got together.

“She would’ve done the same thing. Made the same decision.”

“I know that too. Doesn’t make it any harder. She was always good at offering herself up to save others. My stupid super cop!” He choked at the last sentence, saying her nickname out loud made it more real for him.

They both stayed there in silence, Chris sitting, Carlos kneeling, two broken men, their grief for her, their connection. A short while later Carlos huffed out in frustration, he must have been thinking on something hard. Chris hadn’t had any new thoughts apart from how Carlos deserved to beat him into a bloody pulp, how he’d failed Jill, how he was never going to be the same again. Could he continue in this fight without her?

“Why was this an SOA mission, they should’ve deployed a unit!”

“I’ve been asking the top brass the same thing.”

“We get sent in while they get to sit in their plush leather chairs,” Carlos said, bitterly. In the end it didn’t matter. Unit or no unit. Wesker would’ve wiped them all out. He was a freak. “Is he dead too? Wesker?”

“That’s what the BSAA have concluded. Also declared deceased _in absentia_.” He winced inwardly when he said it, feeling heartless that he’d thrown Wesker's name in with Jill’s.

That solemn look crossed Carlos’ face again, yearning, with a flicker of pride. “Just like her. Gone. Like a switch has been flicked off.” He felt his eyes sting at the words. He wasn’t going to let them get to him, not out of some macho desire to not be seen crying again in front of Chris Redfield. No. He’d cried enough in private, in their home, amongst all the things that reminded him of her, for all the little things he missed about her and all the things he would miss doing with her in the future. He thought they’d grow old together, she and him, when this fight was done. He closed his eyes tight against the pressure building behind his eyes, venom in his voice when he spoke. “Good. Fuck him. Jill had the last laugh.” He muttered to himself tenderly. “You got him, _corazon. Descansa en Paz_.” 

There was another awkward pause between them, both men gazing at the floor. All that was left of her were photos, papers, clinical words and dead images, but that was all they had left of her.

Carlos finally stood up, slowly, offering Chris his hand. It was an offer to help him get up, but it was also an olive branch, a token gesture to tell him that he knew it wasn’t his fault. Chris took it, feeling the other man counter his weight expertly.

They both stood now, gravely, connected in their grief by the same woman.

“I know it doesn’t mean much. I know words can’t replace what you’ve lost, but I am truly, truly sorry.” His voice broke, and anything left of Carlos’ anger was shattered with it too, because he knew that Chris Redfield had worshiped her as much as he had. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. And I would’ve saved her if I could. I loved her, as a friend, as a partner. As the better side of me in all this shit. Strong and loyal and beautiful, right to the end.”

Carlos smiled inwardly. If only he knew the half of it. Those little things that made her smile. How they’d been planning to get a puppy together. How every now and then they’d take a long road trip and see how many motels they could screw in, emulating the aimless but healing trip they’d taken once they’d got out of Raccoon and were falling for each other. But he guessed more importantly to Chris was how she talked about him with an awe that made him jealous sometimes. Now wasn’t the time to tell him, but maybe in the future he would.

He looked at Chris intently, clear brown eyes now full of warmth with not a trace of hate anymore. “You wear that shiner with pride, you hear me?”

Chris nodded, letting out a short, good-humoured huff. He wiped at his eyebrow, feeling the crust of a scab forming over it already. It would look awful, be bruised for days, then fade. It would be an outward sign of both of their hurt, a hurt that would continue even after it had healed. “I will. For her.” 

“Let everyone know her man Carlos loves her,” he replied simply.

Chris nodded again, and Carlos placed a warm, rough hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. Chris didn’t know what to do, but he placed his hand over the other man’s and squeezed it, hard.

“Thank you, Carlos. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“I’m the only one that can give it. For her.” He loosened his grasp and Chris let go too. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said after a pause designed to let his last words sink in. “I’m not gonna be good company for a long while. But maybe, when the worst of it is over, we can have drinks and talk about her. Or if it takes too long we can get assed off our faces and cry together over it.”

Chris liked the sound of that. He could definitely get drunk as fuck in Jill Valentine’s honour.

“Might take you up on that one day, Carlos. I feel so numb inside. I know it’s not all about me but--!”

“I know, bro,” Carlos offered again. So god-damned generous to the end. “We’ll mourn her, miss her, in our own way. For the parts of our lives that she lit up.” He let out a long breath as if trying to move on. “I gotta go, I can’t stay in this place. _Everyone_ knew about us. I can’t bear the looks of sympathy I’m getting.”

Chris looked on as he turned and calmly walked around the table now, not like the possessed footsteps when he entered earlier. As he got to the threshold of the door he stopped.

“I read the report,” he said as he turned, his eyes clear, his words strong. “She saved you. If she hadn’t she would’ve been next. She made that decision. She saved your worthless ass. So, you make sure you live every moment for her, and you finish what you two started!” He sniffed, loudly, double taking him, a click where he almost said something more. But the words never came, and he left that room even more broken then when he’d entered.

Chris stood there, nursing his jaw and eye socket with a shaky hand. He didn’t care how bad it must’ve looked, shooing away the officers that were now hovering outside the door asking if he was okay. He still felt shell-shocked, but also calm, and a tender touch of some sort of relief.

He’d been dreading going back to the United States, because it had meant also facing all the people that cared about Jill – Barry, Rebecca, her mother, friends and extended family. But Carlos, he was the one he’d feared going back to the most. And it was because he was afraid of never receiving his forgiveness. He knelt to retrieve the papers on the floor, thinking how he was picking up the remnants of her life, hidden away in files that would just end up being stored somewhere. As he placed them in a neat pile on the table, he wondered why Carlos had come to London.

_Did he travel all the way here just to punch me?_

He didn’t begrudge him that. But then it hit him. Carlos hadn’t come here for him. He’d come here for _her_ , for the chance to see her again even if it was just her body. But now, with the search being called off, he would become one of the countless souls grieving for the missing, presumed dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation:
> 
> - _“Cabrón de mierda!_ ” / “You piece of shit!”  
> -“You got him, _corazon. Descansa en Paz_.” / “You got him, babe (lit. ‘my heart'). Rest in Peace.”
> 
> If anyone has any corrections or localisation for South American Spanish, do tell me!
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> You can find some more Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira related art on my [Tumblr blog ](https://jeannedarcprice.tumblr.com/) under tags #jill valentine #carlos oliveira #valeveira #resident evil 3 remake


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